Masterwork Progression Features yet Another Annoying Bug That Highlights Heart of Fire Struggles

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We’ve talked plenty about the ongoing “Heart of Fire” launch struggles and today we’d like to highlight yet another bug that’s a major annoyance. One of the key features of the Workshop system was the introduction of so-called “+1” results. Those are small upgrades of normal recipe successes. The devs tweaked many quests so that those now require players to craft +1 results. Unfortunately however they left others untouched, which currently creates a major issue within Masterwork progression.

The main example here are the quest lines leading up to the Masterwork II unlocks. +1 items simply do not count towards the quests, which makes completing them a major pain. +1 successes are meant to be definite upgrades to normal ones and hence it makes no sense to avoid them. That’s why Proficiency and Focus level up simultaneously for the most part. It’s impossible to achieve 100% Proficiency and 0% Focus, which would be ideal to craft “non +1” items.

More Focus Equals Less Chance

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It’s obviously a logical flaw. Nobody can fully avoid +1 items, at least not in a way that makes sense. For Masterwork progression however, you have to. Sometimes it’s even better to not get too much Focus. The graph below shows the chance of getting a non +1 item for different Proficiency and Focus probabilities. A level 70 Artisan and Forgehammer should give you 75% / 50% for a typical Masterwork recipe. That results in a measly 38% chance to get the item you want. Switching to lower Focus and Proficiency values can boost your chance to up to 50%.

You can use the chart to find the sweet spot of completing the progression quests. What you want to do is get as much Proficiency without a chance to get a high-quality result. Even if though, you’re currently paying more than you should. It’s really unfortunate because many players probably thought about getting into Masterworks within the new Workshop system. But currently they run into a weird situation with the MWII unlocks.

Asterdahl Acknowledged the Issue, but No Fix Imminent

The devs by the way did acknowledge the issue, although the reasoning is a little strange. Asterdahl noted that this is in fact intentional “to not further increase the difficulty of the quests” until they have figured out a way for quests to take both normal and +1 results. We’re not sure how smaller success rates with higher level assets are supposed to make stuff easier to complete (and understand) though. He’s right that you can use lower level assets, but it’s still not logical. The comment about selling high-quality results is also inaccurate since some of the harder to acquire items bind to character. So all you can do is discard them.

Thank you for the feedback. We chose not to require the high-quality results for these quests, so as not to further increase the difficulty of the masterwork quests in comparison with the pre-overhaul difficulty of these quests. Unfortunately there is no simple way to allow the quest to take either or a combination of high and normal quality results, as they are discreetly different items on the back end. We do plan to address this issue, however, it will take some time. In the meantime, if you do end up with any high-quality results we hope that you can manage to sell these on the auction house for a profit. If you use normal quality materials to make the items, your high-quality chance shouldn’t be so high that this creates a serious issue. I apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.

These are the type of little inconsistencies and annoyances that unfortunately have plagued the “Heart of Fire” release. We most definitely hope this will get addressed rather sooner than later so that everyone can level up Masterworks without the additional roadblock.

Have you ran into the issue with +1 items and Masterwork progression? Share your thoughts and experience on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit our message board!

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18 thoughts on “Masterwork Progression Features yet Another Annoying Bug That Highlights Heart of Fire Struggles”

asterdahl said: Thank you for the feedback. We chose not to require the high-quality results for these quests, so as not to further increase the difficulty of the masterwork quests in comparison with the pre-overhaul difficulty of these quests.

Unfortunately there is no simple way to allow the quest to take either or a combination of high and normal quality results, as they are discreetly different items on the back end. We do plan to address this issue, however, it will take some time.

In the meantime, if you do end up with any high-quality results we hope that you can manage to sell these on the auction house for a profit. If you use normal quality materials to make the items, your high-quality chance shouldn’t be so high that this creates a serious issue. I apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.

First, I’m pretty sure you mean “100% Proficiency and 0% Focus” when it comes getting non-+1 versions of crafted items. Second, this has been acknowledged and they said they are working on it. Apparently, there is something fundamentally different about +1 versions as compared to regular versions. As a programmer, this doesn’t make sense to me as I would think they would have just coded it such that the +1 was a flag on the item’s record, which should have made it much easier to allow +1 items to satisfy MW quest requirements.

We somehow missed Asterdahl’s comments and have since revised the article. As you’ve pointed out though, it still doesn’t make tons of sense. Even if they can’t pair normal/+1 there are ways to make the quests easier to complete and understand. Higher level assets actually decreasing your chance of a completion is wild. These little issues and inconsistencies have really plagued the Heart of Fire release.

These kinds of issues and inconsistencies plague Neverwinter. The game is riddled with examples of lazy and/or incompetent coding. Another fine one is the fact that when a professions task fails, the game logic still executes the branch of code that determines whether the result is high quality or normal. This is absolutely asinine and is, in a way, an insult to the player. It also increases server load by executing logic needlessly. Granted, this probably doesn’t take much CPU time by itself, but when you aggregate these events and then take them together with other such examples throughout the game, you’re talking quite a bit of needless processing.

And, yes, I do call the developers out about this stuff right on the forums…

There is another aspect in that chain you are missing: A lot of the products you need to progress are obtainable thru guild vendors with the resources and guild marks. If they switch to +1, this vendor selling will get a huge impact for those who want to progress. Allthough, not everyone gots a forgehammer, its a tool worth about 10 millions. If you take the tools you get when progressing, they give you a chance of about 60% to build a non+1, but to get it to +1 is allmost not possible. That would lead to that progressing the masterwork levels I to III will get incredible more expensive as it is already. To have the path open for going the guild vendor route, it would be good if the vendors sells all the products you need (except the legendary ones you need for level progression). Nevertheless, I am absolutely with you, that this mod has involved so much issues for the whole game play.

Technically not impossible. I’ve made several +1s with 0% chance listed on the focus circle. To a point above, I love when a project fails, but hey they WOULD have made a +1! So that should make me feel better right?

In the same dev response the following sentence also appeared: “In the meantime, if you do end up with any high-quality results we hope that you can manage to sell these on the auction house for a profit.”

The non +1 items are selling for more than the +1 items on the Auction House. I just looked at Manticore Duelist Robes, for example, which are required for Masterwork Armorsmithing, and this is the case.

Another possible solution. Right click on the +1 material and have a selection that downgrades a material from +1 to regular. Make it cost some gold or whatever. Since they are discrete objects it could delete the item from your inventory and mail you a replacement.

So many ways to get this fixed that would work within their silly bounds without changing the essential backend.

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